


Think of Me, for There Are Tears to Shed

by TheSonsofDurin



Series: Skyfall [4]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: Death, Immortality, M/M, Memories, Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 04:56:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13629048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSonsofDurin/pseuds/TheSonsofDurin
Summary: Nick Driscoll, Andrew Gillette, both are the same person. One is simply a previous incarnation of the other.





	Think of Me, for There Are Tears to Shed

The man once known as Andrew Gillette does not like hearing about the death and injury of friends. Perhaps it’s because he’s seen so much of it, though usually people believe the more one sees of something, the more they get used to it.  _ He  _ doesn’t like hearing just how mortal he will never be- as Andrew Gillette, Nick Driscoll, or anyone in between. And yet he cannot help but become fond of person after person, forging bonds he knows he will someday see the end of time and time again.

Jack Thompson, he thinks, was certainly a man he’d never meant to be friends with. What coincidence! Befriending a man with the same name as an enemy he’d once had, who had opened his world to more than ‘good vs bad’ and ‘real vs fairytales’. The man who had inadvertently changed his life forever- and they’d barely had a conversation.

Jack his friend, though, a man both similar and very different to the original, had certainly done something similar, because he finds himself listening to a tale of world saving and superpowers and memory- erasers. All while his friend half-lays in a hospital bed after narrowly escaping death by an unknown assailant. Who had, apparently, taken the file he’d given Jack, and who is still, ostensibly, at large and ready to strike once more.

He must have an odd look on his face because Jack stops in his tale about hypnotism and female assassins to stare at him. “Are you alright?” Jack asks.

“Of course. Better than you, certainly. You’re quite sure you’ll be safe here? Your attacker may try for your life again. And with you still being injured, you’re at an even worse disadvantage than heretofore.” Nick grimaces as he looks around the bleak hospital room. “This would be a terrible place to die, though I know many must every day.”

Jack shakes his head. “Is death always on your mind, Nick?”

“Yes, I should say it is. You never know when Thanatos will come and drag you into his domain.” Nick brushes a strand of auburn hair from his eyes. “ You weren’t expecting it.”

Jack sighs. “No, I wasn’t. But thinking about death all day does nothing but drag you down.”

“I can’t help it.” Nick sits back in his chair. “Have you made friends with anyone in the hall?”

“Nick, all of us here are here because we had the worst injuries. I doubt most of the people in the hall can even get out of bed.” 

“Yeah, that was a ridiculous question.” He’s saved from saying anything else by the door opening. In steps Miss Carter herself.

“Sorry to interrupt, boys, but Jack and I need to have a chat. Hope you don’t mind, Mr. Driscoll.” She says.

“Not at all.” He rises from his chair. “I could use some lunch myself, and some sleep. I’ve barely slept since I left home.”

“Well, now’s your time to do so. Have a good day, Mr. Driscoll.” Miss Carter takes his place in the bedside chair.

Nick bades the two farewell and steps into the hallway. White. Sterile. Boring.  _ Skeletal _ .

Oh, how he hates hospitals! The only movement spare himself is a door opening down the hall. He walks towards it, for the exit of course, buttoning his jacket (he’s always found any place but the Caribbean to be cold). He gets momentarily distracted by a button that won’t snap shut and only looks up to a shocked sound. Green eyes meet brown and honestly, it takes him some time to realize  _ why  _ said green eyes are so familiar looking.

“Gillette?” James Norrington asks, looking far too alive and well for a man that was killed nigh three hundred years ago. Yet, apparently not.

“My name is Nick Driscoll.” He says, because his brain chooses to focus on the fact that he was called by a name he doesn’t use anymore rather than the fact that a friend has come back from the dead.

“Oh.” Norrington says lamely. “You look like a man I know.”

_ Yes, I know,  _ he wants to say.  _ We were friends once. James Norrington, someone from Before. _ Yet he says nothing. He coughs awkwardly, giving Norrington a half-smile; he slides around the man, fleeing down the hall.

Seeing James Norrington-the Captain, the Commodore, the Admiral- in such a place, at such a time, only serves to bring back memories. Memories he’s long buried and never wished to revisit. His own heart, locked away in a chest where no one should ever have access to it- and yet he drags himself into his car and it feels like what he imagines Davy Jones felt during his final moments.

_ Teddy, smiling at him from across the classroom during their school years. They’ve never seen each other before, never spoken, yet they both gravitate towards each other. _

_ Teddy, laughing at something nonsensical that Andrew’s said. They’ve been friends for three years, since they were twelve. It feels like they’ve known each other since they were born. _

_ Teddy’s lips on his own as they kiss for the first time. They’re twenty-one, the both of them, hiding under the docks because it was the only place they could find privacy. They’ve just gotten news they’re going to the Caribbean. _

_ Teddy’s face as bright sun shines on it. Andrew wants to draw it, to immortalize it, yet he knows no drawing will ever live up to the artwork that is Theodore Groves. _

_ Teddy’s arms shaking as they lay in bed the night they get home to Port Royal after the battle with the cursed skeleton pirates. Teddy’s always believed in mystic powers but to see it, to live it, is certainly something else. They curl into each other, both afraid to close their eyes and dream of hollow eye-sockets and fleshless, living-yet-not bodies. _

_ Teddy refusing to return to England, even after all of Andrew’s begging. The Caribbean is their home, he says, and I won’t leave it behind. Not even for safety? Andrew asks. Andrew returns to England alone. He doesn’t see Teddy for three years. _

_ Teddy, looking out of place in the streets of London. Uncivilized, passerbys say. Those Caribbean navy men have no class anymore. Andrew’s just happy to have his Teddy back, even if his lover is haunted by memories of fish- sailors and a greedy businessman (an old friend, too, changed from an uptight gentleman that no acting can truly hide.) _

_ Teddy, frowning at him as he gasps for breath and his chest tightens so he cannot suck in even a breath of air. He has the Consumption, the Apothecary says. He won’t live to the end of the year. He may not even live to the end of the month. _

_ Teddy shows Andrew his necklace (once more, the thousandth time). The small vial attached to a leather rope. Teddy’s always said his mother got it from a mermaid. The mermaid put her tear inside of it as a gift. Andrew’s never believed the story, unlike Teddy, but after everything… he doesn’t know if there’s a tear inside of the vial. Teddy’s never opened it. _

_ Teddy grasping his face as he lays upon rocks. His chest. His chest isn’t right, it hurts, different than the hurt he’s used to, and his head is cloudy and he just wants to sleep, why won’t Teddy let him sleep- _

_ Teddy, standing and then staggering, away from him as water rises from somewhere, this is the Fountain of Youth, after all, and then his flesh melts away while the water swirls around his lover. _

_ Teddy, gone forever. _

_ Teddy, his beloved, his darling, his love- is dead and he isn’t and  _ why  _ does he have to be healed from his injuries while his lover is nothing more than a skeleton? _

Andrew bows his head and sobs, uncaring that the windows of the car do nothing to hide his agony from curious strangers.


End file.
